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Islam and Historical Criticism

If one is not a pluralist he/she may be inclined to compare/contrast religions and evaluate them. A pluralist might ask "why?" while others ask, "by what criteria?" Of course, there are various approaches each with there respective standards, one of which is known as the ethical approach.

The ethical approach is a common and quite justified approach that focuses on the character of Muhammad and the effects Islam has had throughout history, which we see so clearly in many Muslim nations today. If Muhammad were really the prophet of God, and Islam the true religion, then Muhammad’s life should reflect this and Islam should have a just, ethical system that promotes human flourishing.

A Reasonable Criteria

I believe in divine revelation, but I do not accept every sacred book that claims to be such, mainly because they are rationally exclusive. But I don’t just dismiss them out-of-hand, blindly, I reject them for specific reasons. Even though they claim to be divine revelation, I put them all through the same grid of reason which is necessary to identify something as revelation.

From the 4th Century to the King James Version to Modern English Translations

Muslims are taught that the Bible has been corrupted. The King James Bible is often marched out as the origin of the corruption of the English Bibles that we have today. This article explains how the English Bibles we have today are not dependent on the King James Bible. In fact, they are translated from a very ancient source.

What Every Muslim Needs to Know About How We Got the New Testament (Injeel), part 3

The New Testament did not drop out of heaven. It was authored and published in the same manner as any other book. 2 Pet 1:21 describes how men were carried along by the Holy Spirit like a boat is carried along by the wind. They were not replaced by God but he managed the process. There is no angel whispering in a cave to one person in the Christian view of inspiration. We have multiple attestations with historical veracity of the public deeds and words of Jesus, his apostles, and their followers. We have overwhelming evidence that the 4 gospels, Acts, and 13 epistles of Paul were immediately received, copied and disseminated. This includes Greek copies as well as near immediate translations into other languages.

What Every Muslim Needs to Know About How We Got the New Testament (Injeel), part 4

The internal evidence of the NT shows an immediate expectation and acceptance of the writings of the apostles. From the Church Fathers, we can see that the sub-corpus of the 4 gospels and the book of Acts were accepted extremely early and exclusively. The letters of Paul were copied, transmitted, and read across the entire population of Christians including his personal letters and the sub-corpus of Paul’s 13 letters were assembled together. Even heretical and gnostic writings confirm the early existence of the gospels in that it is the gospels that they mimic and never the other way around.